


there's no saving anything

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angel & Vessel Interactions, Enemies to Lovers, Guilty Sam, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Internal Conflict, M/M, Mental Instability, Protective Lucifer, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Vomiting, babe started the apocalypse of course he's feeling like shit, like seriously so much, lucifer loves sam very much, maybe?????? idk, sam does not love sam very much, this is just a big ol' mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 14:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4670927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He talks and Sam listens. </p>
<p>Or: if meeting him had gone differently, and it happened more than once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's no saving anything

**Author's Note:**

> nobody asked for this but school is starting up soon and i feel like i'll be too busy trying not to die to write anything,,  
> or maybe i won't give a shit and i'll write more for the sole purpose of spite towards my education. who knows  
> y'all deserve honesty so imma be straight up ok--  
> i really just wanted to write something gross and sam is a prime target i mean look at how much of a mess he is  
> i'm not ashamed of my life choices  
> i also like the idea of lucifer not being a total dick towards sam, and the theory that hallucifer isn't actually lucifer at all and that it's just sam's projection of his self-hatred but ANYWAYS UH  
> i don't know, it's sad and then gross and then sad and then they do kissing. i tried to write a more conclusive ending but it didn't happen and i kind of like where it ends right now so. yeah idk bye  
> beta'd. sort of. i'm pretty sure i beta read it but everything is a blur  
> title is from The National's 'Runaway' which is a kickin song tbh

_"In the Deep South, the Devil is a beautiful boy_  
_who swears and cheats at billiards on Sunday._  
_He is the one who reaches up your skirt,_  
_pulls out the prayers your were saving for someday_  
_and lights them on fire with his tongue."_

His fear was in the hollows of his bones and he shook from it. He wanted to break apart, shatter irreversibly into a million pieces. “Why me?”

He’d never seen this man before, had never even met anyone remotely similar, and yet somehow he knew him; in the darkest nooks of his mind that he never dared to touch, he knew him.

“It had to be you, Sam. It always had to be you.”

This vessel was smaller, slighter, but his presence filled up the whole room, leaving Sam feeling insignificant and trivial in his humanity. He could taste it, mortality bitter on his tongue, looming over him. His eyes were wet, and tears collected under his lashes because what else could he do? He’d hid himself as far away as he could, in the tightest corners of the world, but he couldn’t run from this forever. He couldn’t hop a train and blend into a city with this one. He’d always be found, always.

“Please, don’t be upset.” Lucifer reached to touch him, perhaps to offer some sort of comfort that was beyond his understanding, because there was no word for _empathy_ in Enochian, no word for _compassion_.

“Don’t—“ Years of practice, of having ‘kill or be killed’ instincts drilled into his mind until it was numb, had him acting on his feet, and he grabbed the devil by the wrist. “Don’t touch me, don’t you _fucking_ dare.”

Lucifer’s brow furrowed, like profanity was something he had not yet been acquainted with, especially spoken with such anger and terror. He almost looked upset. “You think I intend to hurt you.”

He was afraid to speak, out of fear that he would whimper or scream or throw up. His feet felt nailed to the hardwood floor. His breath caught in his throat, hitched up another notch. The walls were closing in and the ceiling was crashing down, exposing a vast black expanse above him, void of any stars. He was suffocating.

“Sam.”

His name was spoken in a low exhale, carried over rising winds and whirling tides and rolls of thunder.

“Sam, look at me.”

God and all His angels could descend from the heavens and tell him to keep his eyes closed, and he wouldn’t be able to listen. He blinked, and reality rushed at him, sending a bolt of vertigo through his body.

He met the devil’s gaze and found himself staring into the entire sky just after dawn; with the stars fading and collecting at the horizon, the sun casting brilliant stripes of light across the earth, and the darkness of whatever was out there fading into a soft, silent blue.

“Why would I want to cause you harm? You saved me. You gave me life again, and for that I owe you infinitely.” Lucifer’s other hand, the one that Sam didn’t have locked in his own grip, settled against his cheek, and Sam flinched at the touch. “Are you listening, Sam?”

He hated the way Lucifer said his name, hated how it sounded so right. He took a faltering step back, and his grasp on Lucifer’s wrist fell as he stumbled. “I’m—I’m—“ His stomach lurched and he pressed a hand to his mouth.

“You are not well.” Lucifer sounded _worried_ , which was so staggering that Sam could barely process it.

He let himself sink back down onto the bed, drawing in on himself, wanting to shrink until he became nothing. He felt ready to vomit, to puke up all his sins until he was hollow on the inside. His blood pumped fast in his veins, white-hot, and it made his skin crawl. He was oozing out around the edges, fraying at the seams.

“I did not mean to frighten you.”

“’S kinda difficult not to,” he said, swallowing hard, “considering you’re literally Satan, and you’re asking me to be your meat suit.”

Lucifer mulled this over for a moment. “I suppose most people would be afraid. But I’m sure you know this by now, Sam—you are not ‘most people.’” His hand was on Sam’s shoulder, and Sam was too weak to pull away, too emotionally spent. “You don’t need to be afraid of me. I will do everything I can in order to make you feel safe.”

Lucifer’s and Castiel’s long, hard stares were similar, but they weren’t the same. While they both always appeared confused by people and altogether frustrated when presented with something they had yet to understand, Cas pressed further, asked questions, actively sought out answers. Lucifer simply watched, listened, observed in silence.

Sam hated Lucifer for being there, for reminding him that whether he hid away or not, this was still his fault. The result of his mistakes was standing right in front of him, in faded denim jeans and a dark button down rolled up to the elbows.

Lucifer interrupted the spiraling thoughts in Sam’s head. “Take a walk with me.”

Sam looked up from where he’d rested his head in his hands. ”I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“I am not asking you to say yes to me right now. I can be patient.”

“Leave me _alone_.”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I need you, Sam.” If there was anything stranger to hear from Lucifer than worry, it was genuine remorse, and it made Sam deeply uncomfortable. “What do you think I plan to do to you?”

His hand was outstretched, and Sam resisted the urge to take it. There was still wariness in his chest, making his stomach turn. It settled him slightly, to know he was normal enough to be scared right now, face-to-face with the dragon that tore up Heaven. “Don’t act like you’re not gonna drag me straight to Hell once you have me.”

Lucifer’s gaze wavered, and there was a quiet sort of sadness there, one that Sam found himself able to understand. “That’s the root of it all, isn’t it? You all think I want to be there.” He dropped his hand, pulling it close to him like he’d been burned. “But I was a prisoner, too.”

Sam felt a twinge of pity, of shared sympathy. Then Lucifer’s figure flickered and disappeared, and it died out.

- 

It was past four in the morning some days later, and he was on his knees when the devil returned to him.

Being feverish and sweating and sick to his stomach alone was bad enough, but having Lucifer watch him throw his guts up was worse. He didn’t even ask how Lucifer was here despite him being awake. It didn’t matter.

“I don’t visit you via your subconscious,” he said, answering Sam’s unspoken question. “You just like to convince yourself you’re dreaming. I can’t be here as a whole since I don’t know where you are, but I _am_ connected to you. And if I hear you loud enough, that part of me will find you and materialize.”

“Can you do that thing,” Sam said, voice breaking, “where you at least act like you can’t tell what I’m thinking?”

Lucifer stood there in silence after that, leaning against the sink, clearly unsure of what to do. Sam figured he must have remembered how being touched had gone over last time, but that didn’t explain why he wasn’t just doing it anyways.

The stillness became grating, and once Sam found his voice again, he managed a weak, “Jesus, what do you _want?_ ”

“You know what I want.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t—“ Sam swallowed back a gag-- “talking about that.”

He saw Lucifer’s eyes zero in on his legs tucked underneath him and how badly they were trembling. He wished he had more on, or at least something to hide behind.

“I noticed you were… having a rough time.”

Sam huffed out a laugh, because that must have been the understatement of the fucking century. “And you’ve come to—what? Add to all the bullshit I have to deal with?”

“Watch your tone, Sam.” He sounded darker then, like he could exhale and thunder would roll through the atmosphere.

“What’re you gonna do?” He had no clue where this defiance was coming from; maybe he was tired of playing into these stupid games, tired of doing exactly what they wanted and being scared. And he was tired of the mockery, having them look at him with such disgust, being kicked around and spit on. “You gonna kill me? That’s what I want.”

Lucifer’s eyes widened, if only by a fraction, and Sam’s grip on the toilet seat tightened. “You’re bluffing,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he believed himself.

“You’re not human enough to think I’m not serious,” Sam replied. “Go ahead and try it if you’re so sure. See if I stop you.”

“I would _never_.“

“… Right, of course you wouldn’t.” Sam’s eyes were rimmed with red, and he scrunched his nose up, drew his mouth into a tight line, like he had when the word “freak” passed his lips on that first night.

Lucifer knelt down beside him, moved as if to tuck away the hair that fell in Sam’s face, and then seemed to think better of it. “Even if you were to die, even if I didn’t bring you back, then what? I would still be here. And we’d both be alone again.”

Sam shook with the effort it took not to vomit, and a low moan rose in his throat as he rested his head against his arm. He averted Lucifer’s gaze now, like maybe if he focused hard enough, this would all disappear and everything would be back to normal—or as normal as things _used_ to be, which, if he was frank with himself, wasn’t very normal at all.

“You’re sick,” Lucifer noted, like he’d only just realized, but there was tenderness seeping from his voice and Sam didn’t know what to feel. So like any other time when he didn’t know what to feel, he reverted to anger. It was easier to deal with, easier than shame or fear or, God forbid, heartache.

“Get away from me,” he choked out, fighting through a fresh wave of nausea.

“I want to help you.”

Saying _you can’t_ was too clichéd—and probably false, given Lucifer’s status as an angel-- and Sam doubted it would cut through his tenacity, anyways. He briefly considered the suggestion from the back of his head, the voice that sounded like Dean’s telling him to say _tough nuts, asshole,_ but dropped that idea, too. Combined with the inevitable outcome of his roiling insides, he gave up on responding altogether.

He pulled himself up and curled one arm around the bowl, praying to anybody who would listen to make this stop. He’d be the first one to admit that he was a grade-A fuck-up, and maybe he deserved what was coming to him, but he really, _really_ didn’t want to puke in front of an archangel. He was at rock bottom already; he wasn’t about to grab a shovel and start digging.

Lucifer’s palm rested on his spine, and he wanted so badly to pull away, but his head was spinning and he didn’t trust himself to find the toilet again if he moved now, and—

_Oh, God—_

He bent forward, back arching and toes curling as he retched, his stomach tying itself into an impossible knot. He screwed his eyes shut, braced himself as best he could as nearly every muscle in his body locked up, and then vomited, hard. All the air in his lungs dissipated and the second-long respites in between bouts of sickness wasn’t enough to catch his breath. He coughed and gagged on the tang in his mouth, something akin to a whimper wrenching from his chest, and then threw up again.

Lucifer waited quietly somewhere off to his left, rubbing his back in slow methodical sweeps. Sam refused to acknowledge it as a small comfort, instead trying to shrug out of the touch as best as he could without having to resurface from the bowl. His heart had dropped somewhere around his hips and the edges of his vision were blurring into black. He could barely breathe, and the visceral panic that came with that didn’t help.

“You’re going to hurt yourself. You need to stop.”

“This doesn’t—I can’t _control_ this—“

“You have to.”

All Sam could manage in response was a weak and shuddering “ _fuck off”_ before his stomach contracted and brought up a whole lot of nothing. It happened over and over until he choked up a final mouthful of bile, and it settled.

He sat back on his heels, eyes closed with one hand still holding onto the rim of the toilet, panting and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Something mercifully cool pressed up against his forehead, and he forced his eyes open to see Lucifer drawing back with a damp washcloth in hand. He was afraid the effort to speak would trigger the urge to be sick, so he slumped against the lip of the tub behind him and relented.

“You’re okay,” Lucifer said as he wiped the sweat and tears from Sam’s face, and it sounded like more of a question rather than a soothing reassurance.

Sam nodded and swallowed down the remaining bitter taste on his tongue. “This happens, every now and then. People get sick. It’s normal. It’ll fade.”

He let Lucifer wrap his head around that one while the last of the nausea dwindled into the general dull ache in his stomach.

“Do you want me to leave?”

The question caught Sam off-guard. He’d been so absorbed in how good it felt to be taken care of that he’d nearly forgotten who this was. It had only been a few moments, but he’d found solace in the devil, and a pang of guilt collected with the rest of the discomfort in his gut.

“You aren’t a monster, Sam,” Lucifer insisted. “You aren’t a monster for needing this.”

Sam turned his head to the side and willed himself not to cry any more than he’d already done. “Go,” he managed, and it was the whimpered, broken “please” that followed that made Lucifer give in.

-

It was a whole week before the devil came back; a week of fitful sleep, fits of anger and panic that ended with broken glass all over his floor, and anxiety pulling at him like a rope around his neck. It was clear now that the apocalypse didn’t have to happen for him to plummet off the edge. He was perfectly capable of doing that all by himself.

A cup of coffee rested on the kitchen counter, half empty and long forgotten, rapidly losing its heat while Sam sat on the floor with a loaded gun. He’d been trying to talk himself out of it for the past fifteen minutes, grasping at straws for reasons not to do it. The only thing he could think of, really, was the futility. Lucifer would pluck him from the afterlife and drop him right back in the mortal world before he hit the ground.

He set the gun down next to him and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Snap out of it,” he muttered aloud, choosing to ignore how shaken he sounded. Human instinct generated fear when presented with imminent death; it didn’t matter whether he wanted it or not.

A set of footsteps creaked across the floorboards, and Sam curled his fingers around the gun, turning off the safety and holding his breath.

“Sam?”

He knew that voice and relaxed. Then he realized how screwed up that was of him, how wicked.

“Yeah,” he responded. “Behind the counter.”

The footsteps grew closer. “Are you… are you feeling alright?”

Sam resisted the impulse to laugh. “If by ‘alright’ you mean no longer puking my guts out, then yeah, I’m alright.” Anything other than that was debatable.

Lucifer rounded the corner and almost stumbled over Sam’s legs.

“What were you doing?”

“Nothing definitive.” He turned the safety back on, focused on how light it felt in his hands and how heavy. “Turns out I’ve got a talent for wanting to die; I just can’t commit to things.”

Lucifer looked hurt, heartbroken. “Why would you—“

“Don’t.” Sam’s eyes were dark and glassy, threatening tears. “Don’t play dumb.” He ran a shaking hand through his hair and let his head fall back against the counter, drawing his legs up. “You wanna know something?”

Lucifer sat down in front of him, being careful to leave at least a foot of space. “I’m getting the feeling you’ll say it either way.”

“I think we were damned from the start.” Sam wasn’t looking at him, wasn’t looking at anything at all. “I mean, I… I tried so hard to be what other people wanted, I tried so hard to be good, and nobody thought to tell me that I couldn’t. Nobody told me that I wasn’t—that I’m _not_ clean.”

“Sam—“

“And if by some fucking miracle, Dean and I make it out of this, I _know_ I’ll just keep screwing up, and lying, and hurting people, and I _can’t_ —“ He broke off, biting his lip to keep it from quivering. “I can’t do that again, I can’t let myself.”

Lucifer seemed to be at a loss for words. Silence hung thick between them, nothing except the soft ticking of the clock breaking it up.

“Being clean and pure isn’t the only thing that’s important,” he said after a while, going slow, like he was choosing his words carefully. “You can be pure and still be corrupt. Look at Heaven, Sam. Those angels are literally holy terrors.”

He reached forward and wrapped his fingers around the barrel of the gun, gently tugging it from Sam’s grip. Sam let him. 

“I promised you I’d never lie, so I won’t. You are a complete and utter disaster of a person.”

“Wow, thanks—“

“And that’s what makes you so _incredible_ , Sam.” Lucifer set the gun aside and moved closer. “You’ve made mistakes, huge ones, but you always keep going. You’re constantly moving forward. Anyone else in your position would have given up by now, but not you. Do you understand how much strength that takes?”

“I’m hurting people by existing, Lucifer.” A beat, and then, “You know what that feels like, I know you do.”

“… I do.” Lucifer looked lost in thought, searching for what to say.

“What’s so special about me?” Sam asked. Somehow, he always circled back to that. “Why—why do you care about me so much? And don’t say it’s because I’m your vessel, because Dean is Michael’s and Michael is a dick to him.”

“Michael is a dick to everyone,” Lucifer corrected.

“So why? Why are you like this with me?”

“We’ve been over this; you’re my savior, Sam. You are, for all intents and purposes, my Jesus Christ. And I think you’re a treasure.”

Sam hadn’t been expecting that. For once, he couldn’t think of a response.  

“You, in all your innate human error, your mortality and your loud and messy feelings and your ignorance—you embody everything I hate about humans. You are so deeply, irreparably flawed. I _should_ hate you.”

“And why don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Lucifer said, seeping honesty. “Maybe it’s because you’re so stubborn. You have faith, but it’s not blind. You follow through. You see how rotten this world is and you fight hand over fist to make it better. You aren’t naïve, but you still have so much hope, and it’s inspiring. And I don’t know how you do it.”

Lucifer was touching him now, a calloused palm grazing his cheek, his thumb stroking over the sharp bone there, and fuck if it didn’t feel perfect.

“You can’t destroy humanity,” Sam said. “You can’t tear this all apart, not when there’s so much left to be done. I won’t let you do it. You don’t have to love us; no one’s asking you to.”

Lucifer’s gaze was unyielding, intense and bright, and Sam couldn’t look away. “I’ll never understand that—how you can love people who will never be able to change.”

Sam was lost in Lucifer’s touch, in the way Lucifer stared him down like he was searching through parts of his soul that even Sam himself couldn’t see. “I could teach you.”

Lucifer smiled like he saw the end of the world. “ _You’ll_ never understand that, will you? _I_ can’t change, either.”

The devil leaned in and closed the distance between their lips. The floor gave way, sending Sam plummeting through the clouds, one-winged and in flames.

_"He will sing hymns while feasting on your forfeit heart,_  
_call you blessed while peeling away dignity like stockings,_  
_then drag you out in front of the church to be stoned."_  
_-S.T Gibson_

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry let me live


End file.
